Despite significant progress, there must be continued learning on how to best recognize and engage survivor leaders as experts in anti-trafficking efforts. In partnership with survivors, anti-trafficking stakeholders should focus on strengthening trauma-informed approaches and ensuring that promising practices reflect the specific needs of a wide range of trafficking experiences; funding research and evaluation and engaging survivor leaders throughout all stages; standardizing language and definitions to allow for clear and concise understanding of terms and approaches; and prioritizing equity and meaningful inclusion so that survivors engaged are reflective of the myriad of experiences of human trafficking.

Survivors of human trafficking play a vital role in combating this crime. Their perspective and experience should be taken into consideration to better address this crime and to craft a better response to it. They run organizations, advocate before legislatures, train law enforcement officers, conduct public outreach, and collaborate with government officials on local and national levels. They serve the anti-trafficking community and society at large as doctors, lawyers, mental health professionals, and more. Engaging survivors as partners is critical to establishing effective victim-centered, trauma-informed, and culturally competent anti-trafficking polices and strategies that address prevention, protection, and prosecution efforts. Meaningful engagement means collaborating with survivors in all aspects of anti-trafficking efforts such as developing practices, policies, and strategies, as well as prioritizing survivor leadership of those efforts whenever possible.

Forced labor, sometimes also referred to as labor trafficking, encompasses the range of activities involved when a person uses force, fraud, or coercion to exploit the labor or services of another person. The “acts” element of forced labor is met when the trafficker recruits, harbors, transports, provides, or obtains a person for labor or services. The “means” element of forced labor includes a trafficker’s use of force, fraud, or coercion. The coercive scheme can include threats of force, debt manipulation, withholding of pay, confiscation of identity documents, psychological coercion, reputational harm, manipulation of the use of addictive substances, threats to other people, or other forms of coercion. The “purpose” element focuses on the perpetrator’s goal to exploit a person’s labor or services. There is no limit on the location or type of industry. Traffickers can commit this crime in any sector or setting, whether legal or illicit, including but not limited to agricultural fields, factories, restaurants, hotels, massage parlors, retail stores, fishing vessels, mines, private homes, or drug trafficking operations. All three elements are essential to constitute the crime of forced labor.

Ireland p.306 - The Government of Ireland does not fully meet the minimum standards for the elimination of trafficking but is making significant efforts to do so. The government demonstrated overall increasing efforts compared with the previous reporting period, considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on its anti-trafficking capacity; therefore Ireland was upgraded to Tier 2.